by Rebecca Wade
“Mmm.” Mrs. Wilson still looked worried. “Tell you what—I’ll give you my cell-phone number. I’m a poor sleeper—comes of living with Mother, I expect. She naps during the day and then wonders why she’s awake half the night. If you need to talk, just call me. If I’m not asleep, the phone’ll be switched on.”
Hannah thanked her. But while she was copying the number, she realized there was one obvious question she still hadn’t asked. “Apart from Miss Holt being difficult, and taking over the nursing, what else made the servants suspicious of her?”
Pat Wilson frowned. Then she sighed. “Oh, well, I’ve told you so much already, I don’t suppose one more thing will make much difference. It’s just that from time to time, I believe Maisie was covered in bruises. Black and blue, she was. Only nobody could ever explain why.”
“And they thought Miss Holt had caused them?” Hannah was shocked. “Did she beat her?”
“I don’t think so. That was the point, you see. The bruises just suddenly appeared overnight.”
“Angelina!”
They both turned to stare at Mrs. Grocott, who was wide awake now, a look of triumph on her face.
“No, no, Mother,” her daughter said patiently. “Miss Holt wasn’t called Angelina. You know that.”
“Not her. Angelina was the name of the little girl’s dolly! Knew I’d get there in the end.”
Mrs. Wilson chuckled. “So that’s what you’ve been trying to remember, is it? We were wondering what it was all about.”
But Hannah refused to be distracted. “You were saying? About the bruises? And the servants?”
“Oh, yes.” She laughed nervously. “I expect it was just a lot of nonsense, but for some reason the staff all got it into their heads that Miss Holt was a witch!”
Chapter Eleven
Drawing
“A WITCH! ARE YOU serious?” Sam had arrived after lunch, and as soon as her mother went out to the shops, Hannah had taken him straight up to her bedroom, where she had filled him in on what she had discovered about Cowleigh Lodge.
“That’s what she said.”
“Just because of a few bruises? Why couldn’t the kid have gotten them playing in the garden?”
“They appeared overnight, Sam. She wouldn’t have been playing outside in the middle of the night!”
“Maybe they had some weird connection with her illness?”
“Or maybe the aunt had,” she said darkly.
Sam frowned and ran his fingers through his hair, making it stick up in ginger tufts. Then he sighed. “Okay. I think I get the picture. You’re saying that this is what those dreams are all about? That what really scared Maisie wasn’t some character in a book, but her own aunt?”
“Well, it makes sense, doesn’t it? Maisie suspected her aunt all the time, but never let on. She suppressed it, which is why it could only come out in her dreams!”
“Didn’t you say there was a photograph?” Sam said at last.
“It’s downstairs. I’ll fetch it.” When she returned, he took the photo from her and peered at it closely. He pointed to the little girl. “This is Maisie, right?”
“Yes. And that’s the aunt, sitting next to her.”
Sam opened his eyes wide in mock horror. “Ugh! She’s hideous! No wonder the kid was scared of her. She’s enough to give anyone nightmares, just looking at her!”
“I suppose she couldn’t exactly help the fact she was ugly.”
“It could give her a motive, though.” He grinned. “Maybe she was jealous. Maisie was quite a looker, wasn’t she?”
Hannah nodded thoughtfully, and for the first time she looked at the photograph properly, in a way she hadn’t had a chance to do with Mrs. Wilson there.
Apart from Maisie’s mother, who hardly looked as though she was in the picture at all, the grown-ups had a stiff seriousness about them. Photographs at that time were clearly no laughing matter, and the servants all gave an impression that they were facing a firing squad. Only Maisie looked alive—vivacious. Hannah looked at the small face, shining with vitality even through the faded sepia: at the lustrous dark brown hair, the pretty white dress with its sash and deep hem. Then she caught her breath.
“What’s the matter?” Sam looked up.
Without replying, Hannah ran out of the room and galloped down the stairs. A moment later she was back, holding the doll.
“Look at it!” She thrust it into Sam’s hands and he stared in bewilderment.
“What am I meant to be looking at?”
“Her dress!
Sam obediently looked at the doll’s dress, then back at Hannah, but his eyes were still baffled. “I don’t get it. What’s so special about this dress?”
“Now look at the photo. What is Maisie wearing?”
Still frowning, he did as he was told. Then, suddenly, light dawned. “It’s . . . the same dress.”
“Exactly! You can’t see from the photo that the sash is blue, like the ribbon, but I wouldn’t mind betting it was. And that’s not all. The doll used to be blond. This dark hair has been stuck over the top. And the eyes were blue once, only someone’s painted them brown!”
The baffled expression was back on Sam’s face. “Why would they do that?”
“Don’t you see? This doll has been made to look exactly like Maisie!”
“Well, so what? It’s the kind of thing girls do, isn’t it?”
“And then stick pins in themselves?” Hannah thrust the doll into his hands and at the same time pulled the dress up over the doll’s head, revealing the odd yellowish-brown marks, each with its telltale puncture. “Angelina,” she muttered.
“What?”
“Mrs. Grocott said that Maisie called it Angelina.”
It. She’d said “it” again. Not “her.” The hard little word lay between them. There was an uncomfortable silence.
Suddenly Sam dropped the doll. It landed on the floor with a soft thud, and Hannah looked up at him.
“Hey! What’s the matter? You okay?” His face had gone deathly white, but sweat beaded his forehead and his hands were shaking.
“Please tell me this isn’t what I think it is.”
She didn’t reply. Instead she stared at the doll where it had fallen, the dress rucked up to its waist, the painted smile no longer demure but shameless, immodest . . . bad.
The beginnings of realization came like a trickle of icy water. Quickly, the trickle became a flood. “Of course! It’s an image, isn’t it? Like a voodoo doll?”
“I don’t see what else it can be.” Now that Sam was no longer holding the doll, he’d stopped shaking, but his face was still pale. “It’s dressed like Maisie, its eyes are like hers, and so is its hair. It’s even got her bruises. No wonder it feels evil. It’s had a curse put on it!”
“But could this be what killed her?”
“I don’t know, but one thing’s for sure—it wasn’t meant to do her any good!”
For a few moments, neither of them spoke. Then Sam pulled himself together. “You need to get rid of it,” he said roughly.
“How?”
“Who cares? Burn it. Throw it in the garbage.”
“I . . . I can’t do that.”
“Why not, for heaven’s sake? The kid’s dead, isn’t she? You can’t do her any more harm now!”
Hannah swallowed. “I . . . just can’t do it, Sam,” she muttered.
“Okay, then. We put it back where we found it.” Without waiting for a response, he snatched up the limp creature and went out onto the landing. The board covering the entrance to the loft hadn’t been screwed back but lay against the brown-painted door. Sam pushed it aside and walked quickly up the stairs. Hannah started to follow, but he turned around. “Go and get that toolbox.”
When she returned, he was already back on the landing, waiting for her. In silence, she watched him take the screwdriver and replace the screws, one by one. Then he straightened up again and breathed out, hard. She knew from his face that he was thinking the
same as she was. It had felt unpleasantly like sealing up a tomb.
Sam didn’t stay long that day. The discovery had shaken them both too much for normal conversation, and he left soon after four, telling her that she should call him if she needed to.
In the evening, her mother settled down in a chair with a cup of coffee and the newspaper. Hannah sat with her geography textbook, trying to memorize facts about population density, but she still felt jittery and fidgeted, unable to concentrate.
At last Mom looked up. “Why don’t you do some drawing?” she suggested. “I haven’t seen you take out your sketchbook for ages.”
It was true that the last time she had tried to draw had been the day she’d gone for a walk, the day she’d discovered Maisie’s grave in the churchyard. Since then, she simply hadn’t felt like sketching, which was unusual. Maybe this was a good time to start again. It might take her mind off things. But what to draw? She needed a subject.
Still wondering, she walked slowly upstairs to her bedroom and pulled the sketch pad out of her schoolbag. Then her eye fell on the photograph, lying just where she and Sam had left it, with the face of little Maisie Holt shining out like a bright candle from the somber darkness of the unsmiling figures surrounding her.
Of course! She had found her subject. Just for a second she hesitated, torn between memory of the awful thing in the loft and the immediate, urgent desire to do what she loved best. Then she picked up the photograph, seized her sketch pad, and ran back downstairs.
Mom looked up and smiled as Hannah entered the room.
Settling herself into the chair, she took a long, searching look at the face before her. Again she was struck by its intelligence and vitality. Could she get that onto the page?
But as soon as her pencil began to move, she felt the old, familiar wash of creativity surrounding her, deepening, like warm, sweet water. And then she was afloat.
She worked for perhaps twenty minutes, occasionally correcting a line here, a curve there. But for the most part, the likeness flowed surprisingly easily. Once the face was complete, Hannah added the rest of the figure. Then she sat back and observed what she had done.
It was good. Very good, in fact. She sat back in the chair and closed her eyes. She was used to the sudden release of tension after drawing something that had absorbed her thoroughly. But this was slightly different, though she couldn’t quite analyze why.
She opened her eyes and looked again at the face she’d drawn. It looked back at her. Why did she find that gaze disconcerting, suddenly?
Chapter Twelve
Sunday
SHE WOKE THE NEXT morning to a bright, sunny day, with just a faint haze in the distance promising heat to come. As it was Sunday, there was no need to hurry over getting up, so she had a long, lazy bath, during which she had time to observe that several of the tiles were coming unstuck from the bathroom wall. She didn’t remember noticing that before but supposed it must be the damp, steamy atmosphere that had loosened them. Or maybe they hadn’t been stuck down well enough in the first place. Never mind. That was the real estate agent’s problem. After soaking for a further ten minutes, she dried herself, got dressed, and went downstairs feeling relaxed and well rested.
“Morning!” she said cheerfully.
Her mother was standing over the toaster, waiting. “Morning. Sleep well?”
“Great! You?”
“Mmm. Can you get the butter out?”
As Hannah opened the refrigerator, she dislodged two or three of the magnetic letters stuck to the door and bent down to put them back. “Are you all right, Mom? You sound tired.”
“I’m okay.” She sighed. “I miss Dad, that’s all.”
“Me too.” Hannah took out the butter and shut the door. Looking at her mother’s pale face, she felt a stab of guilt. Lately she’d been so wrapped up in her own concerns that she’d hardly spared a thought for how Mom might be coping. Now was a good time to put that right. “Why don’t we have lunch out today?” she suggested. “There’s that nice pub near the cathedral—the Black Bear. I’m sure they do food on a Sunday.”
“But I bought a chicken. I was going to roast it.”
“We can have it tomorrow, can’t we? Come on, Mom, it’ll do us both good to get out of the house for a while.”
At last her mother smiled. “All right. Why not?”
Hannah divided the morning between her geography textbook and a list of chemical equations that needed learning. Yesterday’s jitteriness had quite disappeared; her concentration was so much restored that by midday she had covered a satisfying amount of ground and felt she had earned a break.
At twelve thirty she and her mother set off, strolling unhurriedly through the quiet streets, enjoying the warm sunshine. The Black Bear was an old coaching inn on the south side of the cathedral square, popular with tourists because of its dark oak beams, crooked windows, and general air of comfortable dilapidation. Hannah and her mother had a leisurely lunch, then walked for a while by the river, watching children throwing bread to the swans.
It was nearly three o’clock by the time they got back to Cowleigh Lodge. Mom switched on the TV, and Hannah settled down to learn some history notes. After an hour or so, she noticed that a familiar shape was missing from the hearth rug.
“Mom, where’s Toby?”
“What?” Her mother glanced around vaguely. “Not sure. Outside, probably.”
Hannah frowned. The cat was almost always there when they were watching TV. Come to think of it, she hadn’t seen him all day. “Has he eaten his dinner?”
“I don’t know. Go and look if you want to.” Mom turned back to the screen.
Hannah spent another ten minutes on her history notes, then went out to the kitchen. Toby’s bowl was empty, so he must have come in through the cat flap and gone straight out again. She put the kettle on to make a cup of tea and was about to open the refrigerator to get the milk out when something caught her attention on the door. Four of the little magnetic letters stood apart from the others and were roughly grouped together.
HANA
For a few seconds she stood quite still, staring at the door. Then she remembered accidentally knocking a few of the letters onto the floor at breakfast time. She must have put them back like that without realizing. It was odd that it looked a bit like her own name, but just a coincidence. Of course, it had to be.
She took out the milk, put cups and saucers on a tray, and carried it into the other room.
Neither of them felt like eating much that evening, having had a large lunch, so later on, after heating a can of soup, Hannah did another hour’s work and then went to bed. When she opened her bedroom door, she noticed that the board covering the fireplace had slightly bowed away from the wall, allowing a faint trace of soot to fall on the carpet. She couldn’t be bothered to sweep it up just then, so she left it there. Just before getting into bed, she drew a pencil line through the date on the torn-off calendar page still stuck to the mirror.
June 17. Just over halfway through the month.
Chapter Thirteen
Electrical Fault
MONDAY MORNING DAWNED BRIGHT and clear, and by nine thirty, warm sunshine filtered invitingly through the windows of classrooms where students sat either writing furiously or despondently chewing gel pens, depending on how much preparation they had done.
Hannah was relieved to find she could manage the first exam—geography—with a minimum of pen chewing, and after lunch she joined Sam in the playground for the usual discussion of the morning’s test. After chatting for a few minutes, she glanced up and frowned. “There’s that boy Henry Knight. What’s happened to him this time?”
Henry was surrounded by a group of children from his own class who were clearly agitated about something, but because they surrounded him it was impossible to see what all the fuss was about. She wandered closer. “Everything okay?” she asked a girl with dark pigtails.
“No! Henry’s got this massive bruise over his eye.
And another one on his wrist. Looks like some-body got hold of him and punched him, but he won’t admit it. Just says he walked into a lamppost. As if we’d believe that!” She rolled her eyes dramatically.
“Has he been to the nurse?”
“He won’t. Says it’s not serious enough. But we think it’s because he just doesn’t want to cause trouble for you know who!” The girl shook her head, making the pigtails quiver in sympathetic indignation.
“Who exactly do you mean?” Hannah knew the answer but was curious to discover what evidence Henry’s friends had to make them so certain.
“Bruce Myers, of course! None of this started till he got here.”
“Has anyone asked him about it?”
“No way! We’re all too scared of him.” She turned back to the little group around Henry, and Hannah walked thoughtfully back to Sam, who raised a questioning eyebrow.
“Well?”
She shrugged. “I honestly don’t know. Those kids seem convinced that Henry Knight’s being beaten up by Bruce Myers, but no one wants to tackle him about it in case they get beaten up too.”
Sam looked alarmed. “That’s bad! D’you think we should tell someone?”
“I don’t see how we can. Like you said before, if Henry won’t say what really happened, there’s nothing much anyone can do. In any case, the girl I spoke to didn’t seem to have any reason for accusing Bruce beyond the fact that he’s new to the school and looks scary.”
“And, right now, Mr. Unpopular,” remarked Sam, jerking his head in the direction of a lone figure standing near the fence. He glanced at his watch. “Come on. Now’s our chance to show ’em how much history we don’t know!”
When Hannah pushed open the door of Cowleigh Lodge that afternoon, the first thing that struck her, judging by the smell coming from the kitchen, was that they were having roast chicken for dinner. The second thing, judging by the clatter and muttered curses coming from the same place, was that her mother wasn’t in a good mood. The reason for this became clear when she saw Mom on her hands and knees, sweeping up the remains of a broken pitcher.